Hiep Thi Le

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Hiep Thi Le ( Vietnamese Lê Thị Hiệp ; * around 1970 in Da Nẵng ; † December 19, 2017 in Los Angeles , California ) was a Vietnamese - American actress . The amateur actress at the time became known to a wide audience in 1993 through the female lead in Oliver Stone's film Between Heaven and Hell .

Life

Emigrated to the United States and made his cinema debut

Hiep Thi Le was born around 1970 (according to other sources, 1969 or 1971) in the middle of the war in central Vietnam. There she grew up as the daughter of a South Vietnamese civil servant under poor conditions in a small fishing village that no longer exists today. Fearing reprisals, Les father fled Vietnam after the victory of the communist north and tried to bring his family to San Francisco, USA . Since the family of six could not escape from their homeland together at that time, Le and her two years younger sister Hoa were sent ahead and smuggled out of the country in 1979 with the help of a fishing boat . Without knowing her family name, they both reached Hong Kong after four weeks , where they were accommodated in a refugee camp. It was not until 1981 that Les's entire family reunited and later relocated to California . There she lived with her parents and six siblings (five according to other sources) in San Pablo . The parents made a living as cooks and also received financial support from the state. Le, who did not speak English, taught herself to read and write in the foreign language.

Le attended Oakland High School , where she graduated with honors. She then moved to the College of the University of California at Davis , where she took a degree in physiology in order to later study medicine. Although she said she had never thought of switching to acting, she and her sister Lien and fellow students from college attended an open casting for Oliver Stone's planned film Between Heaven and Hell in San José in 1991 for fun . An elaborate casting process was organized for the film in several American cities, Hong Kong and Bangkok , in which 16,000 candidates took part. In fact, Le was shortlisted and five months later, after regular screen tests, was given the lead female role in Stone's film, which is based on two autobiographical novels by the author Le Ly Hayslip . Although she had no previous acting experience and had only appeared in a high school play once in the past, Stone decided against giving his five-foot-tall lead actress professional lessons: “I didn't feel I had to was; it was natural, ”Stone said in a 1993 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times . During the shooting in Thailand , which could not be relocated to the original locations due to the negative perception of Hayslip's books in Vietnam, the amateur actress was supported by the author. Both came from the same region in Vietnam.

Between Heaven and Hell released in US cinemas in December 1993. Le received largely critical acclaim for her theatrical debut. Janet Maslin of the New York Times wrote of the 23-year-old leading actress' "impressively confident" game played by Hayslip from the age of 13 to 38. The American daily had already acted as a possible Oscar candidate a month earlier alongside Angela Bassett ( Tina - What's Love Got to Do with It? ) And Debra Winger ( Shadowlands ) . Stone's graduation film of his Vietnam trilogy could not build on the economic success of the previous films Platoon (1986) and Born on July 4th (1989) and was largely approved by the traditional American film critic associations and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , which annually hosted the Oscar statuettes forgive, ignored. The German trade press almost unanimously torn between heaven and hell . The film-dienst praised the hard and impressive beginning of the film, but complained that Stone would get lost in unrestrained sentimentality and caricatures, while the Süddeutsche Zeitung of a "film made of jumps and cracks" between "Buddha's serenity versus American depression" spoke.

Aftermath

With the wages of her movie debut, Le gave her parents two cars, paid off her family's current loans, and financed trips to Vietnam for relatives. Nevertheless, she was unsure about her future career as an actress because of her lack of training. Although she contacted an agent, she still pursued the goal of studying medicine and passed her physiology diploma. “Medical college is something I can relate to, something I've worked very hard for and something I feel like every step I take is of my own consequence, whereas in movies I don't see that I am that way of authority, ”Le said in a 1993 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle . The results of the school final exams, however, prevented her from continuing her studies, which she attributed to insufficient language skills. As a result, Le began to appear again in films from the mid-1990s in order to put aside the fees for future medical studies.

Her next appearance in a cinema production followed in 1995 in the Singaporean film Yao jie huang hou , in which she took on the lead role of a 16-year-old country girl who gets work as a cleaning lady in a mostly transsexual and transvestite hour hotel and drifts into prostitution . Neither with this drama nor with the following American feature film productions, Le could build on her successful role in Between Heaven and Hell . In addition to the title role in Elizabeth Sung's award-winning short film The Water Ghost (1998), she was usually subscribed to insignificant supporting roles, for example as a psychopathic killer in the action film Dead Men Can't Dance (1997) alongside Michael Biehn and Adrian Paul or as an Asian Domestic Servants in Roger Kumble's Ice Cold Angels (1999) starring Sarah Michelle Gellar , Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon . Even a hoped-for career as a television comedian did not come true for Le, and she did not get beyond one-off guest appearances in television series such as Tracey Takes On ... (1998) or For All Cases Amy (2001). Most recently she repeated her role as Mai-Lee in a pilot episode of Cruel Intentions (2016), but the series was discontinued. In 2017 she was seen as a waitress in the series Fridays .

At the beginning of 2004 she worked on the autobiographical script project 1979 - Children of the Sea , which should take up the experiences of Le and her sister as " boat people ". In 2007 she worked as a narrator on Bill Wisneski's documentary short film From War to Peace and Beyond , which was based on the life story of Le Ly Hayslip .

Hiep Thi Le lived in Los Angeles and ran a Vietnamese restaurant with her husband Ong Lay Jinn, better known as Djinn . The connection with the two years older Singaporean film director, in whose horror film Return to Pontianak (2001) she played the lead role, resulted in a daughter (* 2002) and a son (* 2005). Les husband fell ill with Guillain-Barré syndrome in November 2005 . She ran the China Beach Bistro in Venice , followed by the Le Cellier restaurant in Marina del Rey , which specialized in French-Vietnamese fusion cuisine . In 2014, Le took part in the Chopped cooking competition organized by the Food Network . She died in Los Angeles in December 2017 at the age of 46 of complications from cancer. At the time of her death, Le is said to have completed her memoir, titled Daughter of the Sea: My Voyage to Freedom and Womanhood , which remained unpublished.

Filmography (selection)

  • 1993: Between Heaven and Hell (Heaven & Earth)
  • 1995: Yao jie huang hou
  • 1997: Dead Men Can't Dance
  • 1998: Shark in a Bottle
  • 1998: The Water Ghost (short film)
  • 1999: Ice Cold Angels (Cruel Intentions)
  • 1999: bastards
  • 2001: Green Dragon
  • 2001: Return to Pontianak
  • 2003: National Security
  • 2008: Lakeview Terrace
  • 2011: touch
  • 2016: Cruel Intentions
  • 2017: Fridays (TV series)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Kirsten Chuba: Hiep Thi Le, 'Heaven & Earth' Actress, Dies at 46 . In: Variety.com of December 20, 2017
  2. ↑ Profile at hollywood.com (accessed December 20, 2017).
  3. ↑ Profile at imdb.com (accessed December 20, 2017).
  4. ↑ a b cf. Arnold, Gary: Stone completes trilogy, mends fences in 'Heaven' . In: The Washington Times, Jan. 2, 1994, Part D, Arts, p. D1.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h cf. Stein, Ruthe: On Cloud Nine in 'Heaven and Earth' . In: San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 19, 1993, Sunday Datebook, p. 20.
  6. ↑ a b cf. Ee, Tan Shzr: Watch it, this waif is a Pontianak . In: The Straits Times (Singapore), December 23, 2000.
  7. ↑ cf. Janusonis, Michael: Heaven-sent role for a real-life refugee . In: Providence Journal-Bulletin (Rhode Island) Jan 7, 1994, Lifebeat / Weekend, p. 5D.
  8. ↑ cf. Arnold, Gary: Stone completes trilogy, mends fences in 'Heaven' . In: The Washington Times, Jan. 2, 1994, Part D, Arts, p. D1.
  9. ↑ a b Tournquist, Cynthia: Vietnamese-American Hiep Thi Li Finds Stardom . CNN News, Jan. 6, 1994 at 4:26 pm ET.
  10. ↑ a b c cf. Ebert, Roger: Oliver Stone Concludes His Vietnam Trilogy . In: Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 26, 1993, Show, p. 1.
  11. ↑ a b c cf. Stack, Peter: Looking for a Laugh . In: The San Francisco Chronicle, Oct 25, 1997, Daily Datebook, p. E1.
  12. ↑ cf. Hulbert, Dan: Vietnam A Woman's Odyssey . In: The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 19, 1993, Arts, Section N, p. 1.
  13. ↑ cf. Maslin, Janet: A Woman's View Of Vietnam Horrors . In: The New York Times, December 24, 1993, Section C, Page 1, Column 5, Weekend Desk.
  14. ↑ cf. James, Caryn: Tout Sheet . In: The New York Times, Nov. 28, 1993, Section 2, p. 13, Arts & Leisure Desk.
  15. ↑ cf. Between heaven and hell . In: Lexicon of International Films 2000/2001 (CD-ROM).
  16. ↑ cf. Göttler, Fritz: Visions from the flamethrower . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 29, 1994, No. 23, p. 17.
  17. ^ Profile ( memento of February 22, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) at greendragonmovie.com, February 22, 2004 (English).
  18. ^ Miller, Jasmine: Back on his feet . In: The Straits Times, April 16, 2006 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  19. ^ Hui, Ng Hui: S'pore film-maker struck by rare nerve disorder . In: The Straits Times, December 8, 2005.
  20. ↑ Ramos, Dino-Ray: Hiep Thi Le Dies: Oliver Stone's 'Heaven And Earth' Star Was 46 at deadline.com, December 19, 2017 (accessed December 20, 2017).
personal data
SURNAME Le, Hiep Thi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Le, Hiep; Lê Thị Hiệp
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Vietnamese-American actress
DATE OF BIRTH around 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Đà Nẵng
DATE OF DEATH 19th December 2017
Place of death Los Angeles , California